The Joy of Looking

Alison Meehan of Tracks & Roots with a redbud tree. The early-spring flowers and young pods are edible. (Photo by Jay Paul)

If you want to learn how to survive in the wild, Forest Hill Park is a good place to begin.

Yes — right here on the big lawn by the Stone House, where dogs are frolicking and children are trying to launch plastic kites.

“You could definitely live here,” says Alison Meehan, creator of Tracks & Roots. Meehan has identified more than 45 species of edible plants in the park. She credits that abundance to Forest Hill Park’s diversity of “edge habitats,” meaning the borders of forest and meadow and wetlands.

The sweet pink flowers of the redbud are edible. You can eat the leaves of white clover (although they’re better cooked) and the common violet. Yellow wood sorrel, a delicate yard weed, has a pleasant tang. Every part of the dandelion is edible; Meehan makes fritters with the flower buds. A spreading basswood tree offers a bounty: The wood’s good for starting friction fires, the flowers can be used for tea, and the leaves are mild and salad-y-tasting.

And that’s just in the field. Walking along a path a short way into the woods, Meehan points out wild grape, hickory, sassafras, mulberry, raspberry, blackberry and dewberry, a type of trailing blackberry that grows low to the ground.

Of course, you shouldn’t stroll along and munch everything you see; toxic plants abound, too. Meehan snaps a stem of black cherry and holds it out. To me, it smells like a red Tootsie Roll pop.

Meehan, 33, has been foraging since she was a preschooler. She learned to love nature from her dad, an avid outdoorsman. Two mentors in college introduced her to tracking and other wilderness skills. As she grew older, she practiced relying fully on her knowledge.

“Sometimes I would just go out with a water bottle and a knife, in college,” Meehan says. “But two days is easy, you know? You build a shelter, you eat some plants, you sit around the fire.”

After college, Meehan worked in environmental policy and planning, married and had two daughters. She enjoyed her work, she says, but always felt like something was missing. She recognized it as the call to get outdoors and teach.

In March 2017, she founded Tracks & Roots. Taught by Meehan; her husband, David; and other instructors, courses have included bowmaking, leather crafts, mushroom foraging and wilderness survival.

Tracking animals is one of Meehan’s personal passions. She shows me a box of plaster casts she’s collected, and I try, in vain, to identify the one she’s holding.

“Raccoon?” No. “Possum?” No. “Darn it. Fox?”

“Count the toes,” she suggests. “One-two-three-four-five. Very distinct claw marks.” At last she tells me: skunk. Other casts show the delicate pads of a gray fox, the meaty paw of a black bear, the clever hands of an opossum.

Meehan’s mission is to build a community of Richmonders who want to reconnect with nature — both kids and adults. “So often we get stuck inside and don’t know how to play anymore,” she says.

For those who want to start playing, Tracks & Roots is introducing “Fridays in the Forest,” an adult course that covers tree and plant identification, navigation without a compass (or a phone!), foraging, earthen cooking, trapping and hunting skills, shelter construction, and hide craft. Beginning in September, it meets the second Friday of the month for nine months. Meehan is also adding more Saturday classes, as well as a course for homeschooled children.

Instructor Mackenzie Sanders teaches mushrooming classes for beginners. She began foraging out of necessity, she says; with five children to feed, “It was time to buckle down and learn how we could get more free food.” One month, she says, she saved $200 on her grocery bill. And her kids don’t hesitate to try foraged greens, nuts and berries: “It’s got more novelty if they can pick it themselves.”

“I think a lot about how, just a few generations ago, a lot of this would have been knowledge we had, or our grandparents would have taught us,” I say to Meehan, “and it has been cut off.”

“A lot of times, it seems like we know so much now,” she says. “But really, if you look at it, we’ve lost a lot. … I think a lot of people, they don’t know what it is that they feel is missing.”

Tips for Foraging

Make sure you have a positive ID before consuming a plant. If you’re 99 percent sure it’s edible, that’s not enough.

Sketch plants you see. The best way to learn — especially if you don’t have a strong visual memory — is to draw them by hand, Meehan says. Snapping a photo with your phone doesn’t count.

Use all your senses, including touch and smell. If something looks like an onion and smells like an onion, it’s probably edible wild onion; if it looks like an onion but lacks the smell, it could be a poisonous species, like Star of Bethlehem.

Avoid areas that may have been sprayed with herbicides, such as highway shoulders and power line rights-of-way.

Taste a small amount first, to make sure you don’t have an allergic reaction. Some plants, such as wild carrots and daylilies, don’t agree with everyone.

Avoid taking endangered or threatened species. Even with common edibles, leave some for wildlife and for other humans.

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